Although Barber, who graduated from Colorado State University this year, says the employment rate at her construction management program dropped from 99 percent to below 50 percent this year, she was able to land a foreman position at Castle Rock Construction Co.

“I really didn’t think I was going to find anything,” she said. “I was so relieved.”

CRCC co-owner Don Hanneman said Barber has the federal stimulus package to thank.

Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in February, the company has received $39 million in stimulus-funded work, which Hanneman said has allowed him to hire six people and keep another 135 that he might have had to let go. The new employees join more than 150,000 others across the country who President Barack Obama said have found jobs because of stimulus-funded projects, although six Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform question that number.

To celebrate Colorado’s success in creating jobs through transportation projects, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Gov. Bill Ritter visited a bike path Tuesday along C-470 in Jefferson County, where CRCC is working on repairs.

“This is money being well-spent,” LaHood said.

But a report by two public advocacy groups, Smart Growth America and CoPIRG, suggests that the state’s money could be spent in better ways.

According to the report, road and bridge construction creates 31 percent fewer jobs than public transportation projects and 16 percent fewer jobs than repairing existing roads and bridges. CoPIRG director Danny Katz said 20 percent of the state’s stimulus money was spent on new highways, but Russell George , the director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, disagrees.

“We’re not building any new highways,” George said. “Zero.”

George said his department is repaving existing sections of highway but is not creating any new roads.

Ritter said that the stimulus-funded road refurbishment not only creates jobs but provides the state with repairs that are badly needed.

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